Clothing shoppers today are confronted with the dilemma of having an expansive number of choices of clothing style, cut and size and not enough information regarding their size and how their unique body proportions will fit into the current styles.
Unique Solutions builds a 3D body scanner, which is capable of collecting 200,000 circumferential range measurements of a subject which are used to provide sizing recommendations for various garments. The fundamental range processing element in this system consists of an ultra wide band (UWB) linear frequency modulated (LFM) chirp radar. The technique of performing LFM and the use of such technology in a kiosk-based measurement system are discussed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,298,317; 6,507,309; 5,455,590; 5,557,283; and 5,859,609 and Canadian patent CA 2359513, which are incorporated herein by reference.
While a kiosk-based system has proven extremely beneficial, it does have some limitations. For example, it has limited portability. Additionally, the kiosk-based system may have difficulty measuring surfaces having high angle of incidence with respect to the normal of the scanner, and hence loss of information for these surfaces.
There is a need for a handheld scanner system that facilitates measurement of an irregularly shaped object, which may in one exemplary embodiment be utilized to assist shoppers with garment fit.